• Computers and Concrete
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.489-512
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• 2021

In this study, two powerful techniques, namely particle swarm optimization (PSO) and imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) were selected and combined with a pre-developed ANN model aiming at improving its performance prediction of the compressive strength of concrete modified with fly ash. To achieve this study's aims, a comprehensive database with 379 data samples was collected from the available literature. The output of the database is the compressive strength (CS) of concrete samples, which are influenced by 9 parameters as model inputs, namely those related to mix composition. The modeling steps related to ICA-ANN (or neuro-imperialism) and PSO-ANN (or neuro-swarm) were conducted through the use of several parametric studies to design the most influential parameters on these hybrid models. A comparison of the CS values predicted by hybrid intelligence techniques with the experimental CS values confirmed that the neuro-swarm model could provide a higher degree of accuracy than another proposed hybrid model (i.e., neuro-imperialism). The train and test correlation coefficient values of (0.9042 and 0.9137) and (0.8383 and 0.8777) for neuro-swarm and neuro-imperialism models, respectively revealed that although both techniques are capable enough in prediction tasks, the developed neuro-swarm model can be considered as a better alternative technique in mapping the concrete strength behavior.

• Advances in Computational Design
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.225-240
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• 2017

This paper presents the application of multiple linear regression (MLR) and artificial neural network (ANN) techniques for developing the models to predict the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) and Brazilian tensile strength (BTS) of the fiber reinforced cement stabilized fly ash mixes. UCS and BTS is a highly nonlinear function of its constituents, thereby, making its modeling and prediction a difficult task. To establish relationship between the independent and dependent variables, a computational technique like ANN is employed which provides an efficient and easy approach to model the complex and nonlinear relationship. The data generated in the laboratory through systematic experimental programme for evaluating UCS and BTS of fiber reinforced cement fly ash mixes with respect to 7, 14 and 28 days' curing is used for development of the MLR and ANN model. The data used in the models is arranged in the format of four input parameters that cover the contents of cement and fibers along with maximum dry density (MDD) and optimum moisture contents (OMC), respectively and one dependent variable as unconfined compressive as well as Brazilian tensile strength. ANN models are trained and tested for various combinations of input and output data sets. Performance of networks is checked with the statistical error criteria of correlation coefficient (R), mean square error (MSE) and mean absolute error (MAE). It is observed that the ANN model predicts both, the unconfined compressive and Brazilian tensile, strength quite well in the form of R, RMSE and MAE. This study shows that as an alternative to classical modeling techniques, ANN approach can be used accurately for predicting the unconfined compressive strength and Brazilian tensile strength of fiber reinforced cement stabilized fly ash mixes.

• Advances in materials Research
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.219-231
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• 2020

The aim of this study is to investigate the durability of fly ash based geopolymer mortar with and without protective coatings in aggressive chemical environments. The source materials for geopolymer are Fly ash and Ground Granulated Blast furnace Slag (GGBS) and they are considered in the combination of 80% & 20% respectively. Two Molarities of NaOH solution were considered such as 8M and 10M. The ratio of binder to sand and Sodium silicate to Sodium hydroxide solution (Na₂SiO₃/NaOH) are taken as 1:2 and 2 respectively. The alkaline liquid to binder ratio is 0.4. Compressive strength tests were conducted at various ages of the mortar specimens. In order to evaluate the performance of coatings on geopolymer mortar under aggressive chemical environment, the mortar specimens were coated with two different types of coatings such as epoxy and Acrylic. They were then subjected to different chemical environments by immersing them in 10% standard solutions of each ammonium nitrate, sodium chloride and sulphuric acid. Drop in compressive strength as a result of chemical exposure was considered as a measure of chemical attack and the drop in compressive strength was measured after 30 and 60 days of chemical exposure. The compressive strength results following chemical exposure indicated that the specimens containing the acrylic coating proved to be more resistant to chemical attacks. The control specimen without coating showed a much greater degree of deterioration. Therefore, the application of acrylic coating was invariably much more effective in improving the compressive strength as well as the resistance of mortar against chemical attacks. The results also indicated that among all the aggressive attacks, the sulphate environment has the most adverse effect in terms of lowering the strength.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.22 no.11
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• pp.598-603
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• 2012

MgO based cement for the low-temperature calcination of magnesite required less energy and emitted less $CO_2$ than the manufacturing of Portland cements. Furthermore, adding reactive MgO to Portland-pozzolan cement can improve their performance and also increase their capacity to absorb atmospheric $CO_2$. In this study, the basic research for magnesia cement using $MgCO_3$ and magnesium silicate ore (serpentine) as starting materials was carried out. In order to increase the hydration activity, $MgCO_3$ and serpentinite were fired at a temperature higher than $600^{\circ}C$. In the case of $MgCO_3$ as starting material, hydration activity was highest at $700^{\circ}C$ firing temperature; this $MgCO_3$ was completely transformed to MgO after firing. After the hydration reaction with water, MgO was totally transformed to $Mg(OH)_2$ as hydration product. In the case of using only $MgCO_3$, compressive strength was 35 $kgf/cm^2$ after 28 days. The addition of silica fume and $Mg(OH)_2$ led to an enhancements of the compressive strength to 55 $kgf/cm^2$ and 50 $kgf/cm^2$, respectively. Serpentine led to an up to 20% increase in the compressive strength; however, addition of this material beyond 20% led to a decrease of the compressive strength. When we added $MgCl_2$, the compressive strength tends to increase.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.1961-1966
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• 2016

Compressive sensing has proved that a signal can be restored from less samples than the Nyquist rate. Reducing the required data rate is essential for a variety of fields including compression, transmission, and storage. It has been made lots of attempt to apply the compressive sensing theory into data intensive fields, such as image processing which needs to cover 4K and 8K pictures. In this paper, an image acquisition algorithm based on compressive sensing is proposed. It combines DCT, which can compact the energy of a image into a few coefficients, and the Noiselet transform, which is incoherent with DCT. The DCT coefficients represent the coarse structure of the images while the Noiselet information holds the fine details. Performance experiments with several images show that the proposed image acquisition algorithm not only outperforms the previous results, but also improves the reconstruction quality faster as the number of measurements increases.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.223-227
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• 2014

The brake pad is one of the basic brake elements of a railway vehicle. It accomplishes braking action by friction between a pad and a brake disc. Because the brake pad must endure specified high pressure, the compressive strength is managed as the main performance factor. The standards for measuring the compressive strength of brake pads are KRS, KRCS, and KRT. These standards specify the size of the test piece for measuring compressive strength as $20mm{\times}10mm{\times}15mm$ ($W{\times}D{\times}H$). To reduce the uncertainty of the compressive strength, factors of uncertainty were analyzed. The results show that changing the dimensions of the cross section was useful to reduce the uncertainty. The uncertainty due to the new cross-sectional dimension shows the effectiveness of reducing uncertainty.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.57-61
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• 2022

One of the major applications of REBCO coated conductor (CC) tapes is in superconducting magnets or coils that are designed for high magnet fields. For such applications, the CC tapes were exposed to a high level of stresses which includes uniaxial tensile or transverse compressive stresses resulting from a large magnetic field. Thus, CC tapes should endure such mechanical load or deformation that can influence their electromechanical performance during manufacturing, cool-down, and operation. It has been reported that the main cause of critical current (I_c) degradation in CC tapes utilized in coil windings for superconducting magnets was the delamination due to transversely applied stresses. In most high-magnetic-field applications, the operating limits of the CC tapes will likely be imposed by the electromechanical properties together with its I_c dependence on temperature and magnetic field. In this study, we examined the influence of the transverse compressive stress on the I_c degradation behaviors in various commercially available CC tapes which is important for magnet design Four differently processed REBCO CC tapes were adopted to examine their I_c degradation behaviors under transverse compression using an anvil test method and a newly developed instantaneous I_c measurement system. As a result, all REBCO CC tapes adopted showed robustness against transverse compressive stresses for REBCO coils, notably at transverse compressive stresses until 250 MPa. When the applied stress further increased, different Ic degradation behaviors were observed depending on the sample. Among them, the one that was fabricated by the IBAD/MOCVD process showed the highest compressive stress tolerance.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.311-320
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• 2022

TBM concrete segment requires a higher level of material properties compared to general concrete structures due to difficulties in maintenance and uncertainty in ground conditions. In this regard, recently, as one of the methods to achieve enhancement effect on concrete strength, many researchers have been focusing on adding CNTs to concrete mixture. However, even CNTs do not compensate the weakness that concrete exhibits brittle behavior after cracking. Separately, over the past few decades, a number of studies have been conducted on fiber reinforced concrete which exhibits ductile behavior due to fibers bridging cracks. However, only limited studies have been conducted to employ the advantages of the both materials together. In this study, an experimental program has been conducted to investigate the effect of CNTs on the workability and the compressive behavior of PVA-ECC which exhibits ductile tensile behavior with well-distributed cracks even without a conventional rebar. In addition to the compression test, SEM analysis has been also conducted for detailed investigation in the microstructure. The variable was the CNTs mix ratio, which were set to 0.00, 0.25, and 0.50 wt.% to the binding materials. It was observed though the test results that as the CNTs mix ratio increased, the workability considerably decreased with the reduced slump and slump flow. From the compression test results, it was also investigated that the compressive behavior was improved since the compressive strength, the strain corresponding to the compressive strength, and the modulus of elasticity increased with an increase of CNTs mix ratio. The contents of this paper will be useful for relevant research areas such as fiber reinforced concrete with CNTs which might be applied for high performance TMB concrete segments.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.577-594
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• 2023

Engineered cementitious composites with calcined clay limestone cement (LC³-ECC) as a kind of green, low-carbon and high toughness concrete, has recently received significant investigation. However, the complicated relationship between potential influential factors and LC³-ECC compressive strength makes the prediction of LC³-ECC compressive strength difficult. Regarding this, the machine learning-based prediction models for the compressive strength of LC³-ECC concrete is firstly proposed and developed. Models combine three novel meta-heuristic algorithms (golden jackal optimization algorithm, butterfly optimization algorithm and whale optimization algorithm) with support vector regression (SVR) to improve the accuracy of prediction. A new dataset about LC³-ECC compressive strength was integrated based on 156 data from previous studies and used to develop the SVR-based models. Thirteen potential factors affecting the compressive strength of LC³-ECC were comprehensively considered in the model. The results show all hybrid SVR prediction models can reach the Coefficient of determination (R²) above 0.95 for the testing set and 0.97 for the training set. Radar and Taylor plots also show better overall prediction performance of the hybrid SVR models than several traditional machine learning techniques, which confirms the superiority of the three proposed methods. The successful development of this predictive model can provide scientific guidance for LC³-ECC materials and further apply to such low-carbon, sustainable cement-based materials.

• Journal of the Korean Recycled Construction Resources Institute
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.585-593
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• 2021

This study investigates the compressive strength of high-strength cement composites with 64 mixture designs and 2 curing conditions. The cement composites were designed with varying water-to-binder ratios, silica fume content to cement, and binder content per unit volume of cement composite to explore compressive strength development depending on its mix design. An increase in the water-to-binder ratio decreased the compressive strength of the composites, having consistency with the trend in normal concrete. The compressive strength increased with ages at an ambient curing temperature, but it was not identified at high-temperature curing. The compressive strength development was negligible in case that silica fume content to OPC is 15%~25%, but a decrease in the con ten t below 15% reduced compressive stren gth. It was more obvious in the specimen of low water-to-binder ratio. The specimen with 840kg/m³ of binder content per unit volume had the highest compressive strength in this study, and the decrease in binder content reduced the compressive strength of high strength cement composites in low silica fume content.